Most families aren't able to cover the full cost of their children's college experience, which means financial aid will play at least a part of their college planning. If you're thinking about applying for financial aid for your college-aged student (or thinking ahead for a child who's got some time left to go), here are the fundamentals you need to know.

For families that need financial aid to help pay for college, there are no dream schools. There is no early acceptance application. Your child can certainly apply to their dream school, but they need to understand that the Rolling Stones got it right: "You don't always get what you want."

When I do my college planning workshops, I always get asked which parent's assets to use when filling out the FAFSA form. Considering the many forms that today's modern family can take, it's easy to see how one can get confused.

While applying for financial aid may seem like a painful process, it's an important one. If you or your family need help paying for college, you should maximize your opportunities to receive financial aid. The FAFSA helps you do just that.

Now, as an officially college bound student (or parent of a student) you may be feeling a new sense of anxiety over how to cover the cost of your investment in higher education. The answer is financial aid.

As students look forward to attending school and experiencing all that college has to offer, they may not be thinking about how to properly manage their money. Making smart financial choices while in school will not only ease the burden of college debt, but also set them up for financial success beyond graduation.

According to a recent analysis by Mark Kantrowitz, Senior Vice President at Edvisors Network and author of "Filing the FAFSA," roughly 2 million students who could have qualified for need-based Federal Pell Grants in the 2011-12 academic year never filed.

Experts who know precisely how the government calculates EFCs say there's one overarching reason for this shock: the formula is so outdated--it's loosely based on a family budget from 1967--that it's no surprise many 21st Century families are astonished when they receive their EFC estimates.

High school kids have a far greater chance of having no summer job or even an after-school job than at any time in the recent past. They are being squeezed out of those jobs by college-age and older workers.

Where a student attends college, how much it will cost the family, and whether they end up with a little or a lot of debt depends on everyone making college finances a priority. It's never too early to start planning for how to pay for college.

As kids across America are celebrating their college acceptance letters, parents of high school seniors are freaking out over the quarter-million-dollar question (as some private school sticker prices hit $60,000): How are we going to pay for it?

Since it was introduced, FAFSA has been simplified. In 2009 it took as much as an hour and half to fill out. Today, intuitive, online software lets parents and students skip irrelevant questions and load financial info directly from the Internal Revenue Service website.